Meade relinquishes that Fellowship on retirement age in 1974. During his retirement, he has acted as full-time chairman of a committee set up by the Institute for Fiscal Studies to examine the structure of direct taxation in the United Kingdom.

In 1947, Meade becomes Professor of Commerce at the London School of Economics. There he writes two books, “The Balance of Payments” and “Trade and Welfare”, which are the basis for his later Nobel Prize.

In 1930 he is elected to a Fellowship at Hertford College, Oxford, with freedom in the first year to continue his study of economics as a post-graduate student. He joins Trinity College after being invited to do so by Dennis Robertson whom he met through his great aunt. There he becomes part of the “Cambridge Circus”, a group of young economists closely associated with Maynard Keynes and discussing his work “A Treatise on Money”.

At the end of 1937, he joins the Economic Section of the League of Nations in Geneva as editor of the World Economic Survey and produces two issues.

From 1931 to 1937, he is a Fellow and Lecturer in Economics at Hertford College, Oxford. His job is to teach the whole corpus of economic theory. Considering the situation in the 1930s - mass unemployment and the threat of war – he is especially interested in the economics of mass unemployment and international economics.

James Meade shares the 1977 Nobel Prize in Economics with Bertil Ohlin "for their pathbreaking contribution to the theory of international trade and international capital movements". Meade has demonstrated the effects of economic policy on foreign trade theory.

In 1933 he marries Margaret Wilson, the secretary of the Oxford branch of the League of Nations Union. This was an intergovernmental organisation in 1920 at the end of the First World War, its principal mission being to maintain world peace by collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration.

He is brought up in the City of Bath in England. He attends Lambrook School from 1917-1921.

He attends Malvern College until 1926. His education is concentrated on the Latin and Greek languages.

James Meade dies in Cambridge.

In 1957 he moves from London to the chair of Political Economy in Cambridge, which he holds until 1967, when he resigns to become a Senior Research Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge.

James Edward Meade is born in the English town of Swanage.

After the outbreak of war, the family leaves Geneva with their three young children. They become part of the refugee crowds fleeing across France from the German army. After some adventures, they reach England where James Meade becomes a member of the Economic Section of the War Cabinet Secretariat. He remains there until 1947, becoming Director in 1946. The Section becomes an influential body, giving advice on economic problems ranging from food rationing to industrial price policies.

At Oriel College, Oxford he continues his classical education until 1928. He then moves over for two years to the newly-started School of Philosophy, Politics and Economics. His interest in economics comes from witnessing the heavy unemployment in the United Kingdom in the inter-war period.